Prepared Cities & City Videos

BARCELONA, SPAIN

Barcelona has to cope with water scarcity and the fact that the current urban water management may not be robust enough, hence the need for methodologies and tools to simulate water management and to test risk reduction and adaptation measures. In addition there is an expected effect of an increased occurrence of highly intense rainfall events that the sewer system can not cope with. The expected increase in extreme rainfall events and the rise in sea level will strain difficulties to the urban drainage performance. Barcelona will demonstrate a decision support system (DSS) for planning complex urban systems for regions under water stress. Another demonstration involves conceptual catchment and conservation scheme pertaining to water from high flow events, such as Managed Aquifer Storage (MAR) or underground storage of low quality surface water or reclaimed water. Methodologies for urban runoff risk assessment will be tested to analyse the impacts of future changes in urban runoff as well as the suitability of guidelines developed within the PREPARED project. Finally new methodologies for the monitoring of sediments in sewer systems will be demonstrated and will result in a reduction of the annual municipal sewer removal budget. The new technologies will guarantee that the budget available to protect Barcelona against combined sewer overflows and floods is spent in the most efficient way and will allow the city to be prepared for future challenges. Integrated management of scarce water resources has allowed economic development in a region with water scarcity problems.